Tag Archives: Facebook

Jun 1 2023

After Contempt Threat, FBI Director Wray Admits Oversight Whistleblower Report on Shady Biden $5 million Payment Does Exist


Posted originally on the CTH on May 31, 2023 | Sundance 

An interesting series of updates to the FBI whistleblower case of Joe Biden taking a $5 million bribe payment which now looks to have originated in Ukraine.

The background claim is pretty basic. A whistleblower approached congress stating the FBI had a report, an unclassified FD-1023, detailing a conversation with a ‘confidential human source’ (CHS) that outlined Vice President Joe Biden taking a $5 million payment from a foreign national to affect a U.S. policy decision.  The FBI agent responsible for investigating the CHS claim was FBI Supervisory Intelligence Analyst Brian Auten, a sketchy character from the Trump-Russia probe.

The investigative events took place in June and July 2020 during the presidential election year.  The claim is that FBI Supervisory Intelligence Analyst Auten reportedly buried the CHS allegation saying it could not be corroborated, and then wrote an assessment that it was Russian disinformation.  However, the FBI investigative team didn’t see any effort by any FBI member to substantiate it.  Hence a whistleblower, with specific knowledge of the details in the allegation, surfaces and tells congress the FBI is hiding the FD-1023 that outlines the confidential human source allegation of bribery.

Congress requested the FD-1023, the FBI refused to provide it.  House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer then set a compliance deadline while he coordinated with Senator Chuck Grassley.  The FBI still refused to turn it over, saying they would neither confirm nor deny the FD-1023 existence, and said releasing any information like that would potentially compromise Confidential Human Sources (CHS’s).  The proverbial sources and methods excuse.

Yesterday, James Comer told FBI Director Chris Wray he would be held in contempt of congress for refusing the provide the letter to oversight.

Today, Christopher Wray admitted the existence of the FD-1023 and told Rep Comer and Senator Grassley he would let them come to FBI headquarters to look at it.

The FBI is still claiming the allegations have no way to be substantiated or corroborated.  However, there is a very strong possibility, based on records that Comer and Grassley have received from subpoenas for Biden banking information, the substantiation documents are already in the hands of congress.

WASHINGTON—House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) and Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) today issued the following statements after their discussion with FBI Director Christopher Wray about producing to Congress the unclassified, FBI-generated record alleging a criminal scheme involving then-Vice President Joe Biden and a foreign national.

“Today, FBI Director Wray confirmed the existence of the FD-1023 form alleging then-Vice President Biden engaged in a criminal bribery scheme with a foreign national. However, Director Wray did not commit to producing the documents subpoenaed by the House Oversight Committee. While Director Wray – after a month of refusing to even acknowledge that the form existed – has offered to allow us to see the documents in person at FBI headquarters, we have been clear that anything short of producing these documents to the House Oversight Committee is not in compliance with the subpoena. If the FBI fails to hand over the FD-1023 form as required by the subpoena, the House Oversight Committee will begin contempt of Congress proceedings,” said Chairman Comer.

“While the FBI has apparently leaked classified information to the news media in recent weeks, jeopardizing its own human sources, it continues to treat Congress like second class citizens by refusing to provide a specific unclassified record. Director Wray confirmed what my whistleblowers have told me pursuant to legally protected disclosures: the FBI-generated document is real, but the bureau has yet to provide it to Congress in defiance of a legitimate congressional subpoena. This failure comes with consequences,” Senator Grassley said. (read more)

Jun 1 2023

Project Veritas Sues James O’Keefe Because He Left After They Fired Him – Demand Injunction to Stop O’Keefe From Working


Posted originally on the CTH on May 31, 2023 | Sundance 

Apparently, when the Project Veritas board of directors fired founder and CEO James O’Keefe, they didn’t expect the result to be a collapse in their operational business model.  As the kids would say, Veritas f**ked around and found out.

Stunningly, Project Veritas is now suing James O’Keefe, the man they fired, for having the audacity to launch O’Keefe Media Group (OMG), and they are demanding a court order to stop O’Keefe from earning a living. [FULL pdf HERE]

According to the lawsuit, O’Keefe will not stop doing the expose’ journalism and activism that O’Keefe is known for.  Project Veritas is not happy, because many of the donors and supporters have left PV to follow James O’Keefe at OMG.

Veritas demands an injunction against O’Keefe, which may stop people -workers and donors- from leaving PV to join him. The lawsuit is a little extreme in the way it is written as an effort to convince a civil jury to find in their favor. [READ HERE]

Project Veritas sounds like they are an organization full of professional Republicans.

May 30 2023

Berkshire Hathaway: CEI Score 0


Armstrong Economics Blog/WOKE re-Posted May 30, 2023 by Martin Armstrong

Berkshire Hathaway managed to score a total of zero imaginary woke points on the Corporate Equality Index. The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) investigates how woke a business has become, solely on LGBTQ+ policies, and assigns it a woke credit core (CEI). I mentioned in another post how this score has become increasingly harder to obtain, with the organization making obscene demands regarding employer-funded healthcare and practices. So is Warren Buffett secretly homophobic to receive the lowest possible CEI score? No.

Buffett simply declined to report Berkshire Hathaway’s business to the Human Rights Campaign. The company did not suffer as a result. No one is forced to report their company’s policies to this agency, and yet nearly all Fortune 500 companies do. The HRC states it has over “1,200 participants,” meaning companies are choosing to pander to the woke agenda.

The HRC has been cracking down on businesses for over 20 years and the requirements have become completely ridiculous. “We get surveys all the time … on all kinds of things, and we basically don’t answer them,” explained Buffett in a 2014 interview, and added it’s Berkshire’s practice not to respond to surveys. Furthermore, Buffett does not dictate policies for the companies under Berkshire.

So yes, it really is that simple. Companies need to come together and agree to refrain from reporting to the HRC and giving any credit to this social score. The HRC, backed by Soros, has turned human rights into a culture war that is destroying companies (see: Anheuser Busch). It has taken numerous failed marketing campaigns for companies to realize that the woke agenda is bad for business. I know a gay man who said he detests “rainbow marketing” and finds it offensive. These businesses try to appease the HRC but should focus on their clients. I disagree with Buffett on many topics, but this is one case where I believe he is correct.

May 30 2023

Illegal Residents Permitted to Vote in Texas


Armstrong Economics Blog/Corruption Re-Posted May 30, 2023 by Martin Armstrong

The Democrats defeated a proposed bill that would require voters in Texas to be citizens of the United States. I could not simply enter a country where I do not have citizenship and vote in their elections. Sen. Brian Birdwell (R-Granbury) brought Senate Joint Resolution (SJR) 35 to the Senate floor where it passed in a 29 to 1 vote. However, House Democrats found a way to kill the proposal.

SJR 35 would have prohibited “persons who are not citizens of the United States” from voting under the Texas Constitution. This is  a massive issue since tens of thousands of undocumented persons have entered the US from the Texas-Mexico border. No one technically voted against the bill, as that would make the scheme too obvious. Instead, 54 Democrats registered “present, not voting” in order to prevent the measure from receiving the 100 votes needed to pass.

Rep. Matt Schaefer (R-Tyler) condemned these actions by saying, “An open border is the long-term strategy.” This is why they do not want people to provide identification to vote. You cannot even rent a book from the library without identification. The plan is overtly obvious and shows that one side of the political aisle has absolutely no respect for the US election process.

May 29 2023

The Decline & Fall of the FBI?


Armstrong Economics Blog/Ethics Re-Posted May 29, 2023 by Martin Armstrong

When James Comey just spoke to Trump, he took notes. When he formally interrogated Hillary, he claimed he never took notes. Those who question if there has already been a coup by the Deep State should rejoice in this testimony before the Home Land Security Council.

May 29 2023

Musk Admits He Doesn’t Control Platform Censorship Decision making – Watch the Twitter Financials


Posted originally on the CTH on May 29, 2023 | Sundance 

Everything I have outlined about Twitter is going to surface as accurate over time.  There are two major elements: (1) DHS govt influence, now evidenced in the Twitter Files; and (2) the Twitter financial issues, which explain the recent hiring of Linda Yaccarino, which are soon to surface.

Yesterday, Elon Musk responded to criticism of Twitter censorship, vis-a-vis government demands, with this Tweet: “Please point out where we had an actual choice and we will reverse it.”

The Musk supporters are saying Musk has to comply with government demands if their national laws require it. However, that angle doesn’t take into consideration the choice that Musk/Twitter always have.

If the platform content is not approved by a government, and that govt then demands removal or censorship of that content, Twitter always has two options. One, to comply with the demand and block or restrict the user content (which is the direction they have taken); or two, stop allowing the platform to operate in the country demanding the censorship. It is the latter option that everyone always avoids mentioning.

However, the issue appears to be bigger and goes to the heart of the second aspect of Twitter we have noted.

Twitter is not viable as a business model, under the construct of its creation. Twitter operates on Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud, and Google Cloud.

Both big tech monopoly systems are extremely expensive and as a result Musk is stuck in contracts with AWS and Google that are major financial drains. Twitter does not operate any server infrastructure; the only asset that Twitter has on the tech engineering side is the software to operate the platform.

Absent any hardware infrastructure, Musk is vulnerable to the excessive costs of AWS & Google.

Keep in mind that all cloud-based systems are arguably U.S. government subsidized and end in server farms built and owned by the U.S. govt. Send something to a cloud-based system, or operate your tech through a cloud-based system, and you are essentially operating on govt hardware.

[This is the background #2 issue to Jack’s MAgic Coffee Shop.]

As you can see from this article in March 2023 [MUST READ], Musk was behind in his payments to Jeff Bezos (Amazon, AWS) but up to date on his payments to Google.

In essence, even as the article admits, Elon Musk is making payment decisions based on determinations of how best avoid advertising revenue interruptions.  Keep this in mind.

As you can see in the article, Musk is on the hook for contracts with AWS through 2025.  As written, “AWS is not willing to renegotiate the five-and-a-half year contract it signed with Twitter in 2020.”  That is before Musk took ownership. “That contract required Twitter to pay $510m over that period. It was signed when Twitter was expecting to move its main timeline over to AWS, but that never occurred (instead it hosts Twitter Spaces and other services), meaning that Twitter is not fully making use of the contract.”  So, Jeff Bezos (AWS) has a hook into Musk for roughly $100 million a year.

Additionally, “Twitter uses Google Cloud to a greater degree, with its own five-year contract worth $1bn. While Twitter is also looking to reduce its Google Cloud costs.”  That puts Musk on the hook for $200 million a year to Google, and Google controls the vast majority of advertising revenue on the web.

Each system, AWS and Google, represents a threat vector for Twitter (Musk), insofar as Twitter cannot operate without the cloud services each provider contributes to the data processing.

Absent his own data processing systems, Musk is vulnerable to the AWS/Google demands. $300,000,000/yr just for them.   Again, keep this in mind.

This is all part of the financial section I have written about extensively, and it has an impact on the content.

With this information as the overlay, how much freedom does Musk actually have with the platform when he is dependent on Google and Amazon to operate?  The same Google who controls the majority of his revenue (advertising) controls his data processing.  See the problem?

On content, look at what AWS did to Parler as an example of what they could do to Twitter if Musk is not compliant.  On revenue, consider how Google already has influence over the monetization of any platform on the internet; combined with terms and conditions for content control they can exert through their revenue power.

♦ Amazon (AWS, CIA, U.S. Govt) then becomes the primary control lever for rules and guidelines on content, the government compliance stuff.  How does it surface?  Musk saying, he must censor Turkish political opposition parties.

♦ Google then becomes the primary control lever for Twitter revenue.  How does that surface?  Musk hiring Linda Yaccarino as CEO of Twitter.

Can you see it now?

Do the irreconcilables start to reconcile?

Does Elon Musk saying, “Please point out where we had an actual choice and we will reverse it,” start to make sense now?

Given that Musk is on the hook for $300 million/yr, and that’s just one expense, I suspect Musk is closer to bankruptcy with Twitter than most people think.

The operating costs are too extreme for the business model.  They always were; however, I suspect the USG was indirectly subsidizing Twitter through data processing when Jack Dorsey had ownership.

The subsidy would be part of the private-public partnership, where the USG was benefitting from their ability to control public information and public opinion.

With the USG control via DHS and FBI now in sunlight (Twitter Files), the financial side has always been the second -and hidden- big picture element around Jack’s Magic Coffee Shop.

Bottom line, Musk has to make decisions through one prism, THE ECONOMICS.  Musk’s decision-making, pro freedom or not, is constrained by this financial dependency. Hence, a lot of the platform censorship elements remain (including some personnel) and now the outreach to appoint Google/WEF approved Linda Yaccarino in an effort to enhance the revenue.

As the end dates of the contract terms with AWS and Google start to come closer, decisions will have to be made if Musk wants a sustainable platform.  Either he builds out new hardware (extremely costly and likely cost prohibitive) or he looks for an existing platform that he might be able to merge with and operate.

If you are a platform owner of reasonable scale, and you control your own servers and data-processing, watch out for David Sacks (repping for Elon) to tap you on the shoulder.  Twitter is in a bind, or Musk needs to sink buckets of money he doesn’t have into building something.  The financial viability is now the primary prism, not principles of free speech.

On the content side Elon Musk needs content providers, which explains the thirst for Tucker Carlson and even the DeSantis launch to gain some operational impact.  That’s likely where his key tech advisor David Sacks again comes into play.  On the type of content, that’s where Linda Jaccarino steps in as the Google/WEF bridge to approved content revenue.

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May 28 2023

Corporations Losing Their Minds


Armstrong Economics Blog/Politics Re-Posted May 28, 2023 by Martin Armstrong

There has been a huge backlash against Target just like Budweiser. Both boards of directors should be fired and barred from ever serving on any board or any corporation – EVER! They are engaging in indoctrination that supports changing the gender of children without parental consent. If you cannot consent to sex no matter what under the law before 18, then how can a child consent to a sex change before 18 openly denying any notification to parents?

This has gone way too far. This is no longer about equality and inclusionism. This is indoctrination and it will be remembered by historians as a critical factor for the collapse of Western society. I will NEVER buy a Budweiser product again nor anything from Target. Corporations are here to serve EVERYONE, and if they stood up and said will only vote for a Democrat or a Republican, they have entered the realm of politics. That is what is taking place here. ANY company engaging in indoctrination OF ANY KIND should be boycotted. Look at SVB. Their risk management was selected to check boxes for WOKEISM – not qualification.

Going to school and seeking degrees is no longer even important. If you do not check a box, you will not be hired in the big corporate world anymore. The WhiteHouse is bragging about being WOKE and look at the result. Qualification is now secondary.

Girls are being discriminated against in sports. Family values and traditions are to be overthrown. Those who identify as Transgender in only about .5% of the population. This whole movement is being pushed to also reduce the population. Mothers are now birthing people and women are no longer identifiable. As I have said, Thailand is the capital of Transgender surgery.  They even have their own theatre with “Ladyboys” performing and tourists go to watch. The difference is that they are openly accepted and call themselves “Ladyboy” and do not see to demand everyone else call them a woman. They are NOT confrontational and they are NOT engaging in indoctrination.

We must look behind this movement as to its real purpose and who is funding this agenda for other objectives.

May 26 2023

Corporate Equality Index 2023 – New Criteria for the Woke Credit Score


Armstrong Economics Blog/Corruption Re-Posted May 26, 2023 by Martin Armstrong

(old ratings featured above; deemed not inclusive enough)

I mentioned how the Corporate Equality Index (CEI) is the reason companies are going WOKE. This is the imaginary social credit score based on a company’s adherence to WOKE policies. The Human Right Campaign (HRC), a massive international political lobbying group that dictates the CEI score, employs 39 million workers globally. George Soros and the Open Society Foundation fund the HRC directly.

The 2023 Corporate Equality Index toolkit has a point system for various woke policies. The new policy has expanded these woke policies and makes it increasingly difficult for companies to operate outside of the far-left narrative. For example, spousal and partner benefits can earn a company up to 20 possible points. An employee does not need to be legally married for their partner “regardless of sex” to receive benefits, which include surrogacy benefits, expensive IVF treatments, foster care assistance, cryopreservation, and adoption assistance.

Transgender-inclusive healthcare benefits (25 possible points) entail a full page of demands, including puberty blockers and hormone therapy for minors, and reconstructive surgical reassignment surgery (including reconstructive chest, breast, and genital procedures). Employers “MUST” offer these procedures to all employees. They must also offer at least five out of 10 “essential services,” including travel expenses, tracheal shaving, facial feminization surgery, voice modification surgery, voice therapy, and hair removal surgery.

Outreach or engagement to the broader LGBTQ+ community is worth 15 points, meaning that businesses must show they are either trying to recruit more gay employees, working with gay-friendly third parties, providing philanthropic support to at least one LGBTQ+ organization, and more. This criterion is forcing businesses to recruit other businesses into the woke agenda. Forget qualifications! As long as they’re part of the gay community, they’re hired.

The criteria for a 100 CEI score rose dramatically in just one year. Religious organizations or employers are demonized for holding true to their values. Are we really forcing employers to pay for breast augmentations and voice therapy? The most disturbing piece is that employers must now provide “gender-affirming care” procedures to the CHILDREN of their employees. If you look around, nearly every business is adhering to this agenda as the CEI social credit score has become just as important as the ESG climate social credit score.